The disclosed embodiments relate generally to a method for processing print jobs and, more particularly, to an approach in which a plurality of print jobs are sorted into two or more print groups, each group eventually being aggregated for submission to one or more print-related devices for processing.
Creation and production of printed documents often involves many production and finishing operations that are highly variable with each job. In general, the various operations can be grouped into three major phases: 1) creation of the document information, including prepress operations that render the document in a form suitable for printing, 2) printing of the information onto some form of media such as paper, and 3) finishing of the selected media into a completed document. These 3 major phases often have many sub-phases, and the entire process may vary from relatively simple to extremely complex.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,462,756 B1 to Hansen et al. discloses a system and method for managing production printing workflow. The system includes workflow management software for managing and facilitating the procedural stages of the workflow including job origination, job preparation, job submission and job fulfillment. The workflow management software provides an integrated object oriented interface which visually reflects and interacts with the workflow. The software further provides functionality for efficient page level modifications to documents at the job preparation stage. This functionality allows such modifications to be easily made to selected pages and visually verified by displaying visual representations of the modifications on visual representations of the pages.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,092,963 B2 to Ryan et al. discloses a print production and finishing system for electronic management and control of a wide range of finishing processes characterized by input from multiple production operations and equipment that, depending upon the job, might be variably applied to work pieces that themselves are highly variable between different jobs. The disclosed embodiments of the '963 patent are applicable to many operations where processes for production of work pieces are managed separately from processes for finishing and packaging of such work pieces.
The short print runs seen in digital printing are of particular concern for continuous feed printers capable of printing over 1,000 pages per minute. As print quantities drop, the digital front end of a continuous feed printer might encounter difficulties in processing enough print jobs to keep the print engine running continuously. This problem is not so much attributable to rasterization speed as it is to the overhead required to handle an unwieldy number of discreet files in a timely manner. To deal with this problem, it is conceivable that a print shop could process multiple unrelated jobs as a single job. While this approach may address performance issues, it can be problematic because the original jobs are no longer visible as entries in the workflow. Moreover, grouping unrelated jobs together can significantly increase the difficulty of generating individual outputs from the single job.
At least three related references, namely U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,650,433; 7,133,149; and 7,187,465 are concerned with aggregating print jobs. In one disclosed approach, jobs may be aggregated as follows:                The prepress aggregation module, a rules-based program, aggregates print jobs by scanning the Ordered Items table of the central database and searching for items (print jobs) that have the same printing requirements, e.g., the same delivery date, paper grade, and post press processing requirements. Scanning generally continues until enough print jobs have been located to fill a layout of a given size. The XML files corresponding to the selected print jobs are then pulled from the Document Table, converted to PostScript files and aggregated, as discussed above.        
This approach appears to possess some of the same possible shortcomings as the above-discussed prior art approach in that original jobs do not appear to be visible as entries in the workflow.
The pertinent portions of all of the above-mentioned patents are hereby incorporated by reference.
In accordance with a first aspect with the disclosed embodiments there is disclosed a computer implemented method of automatically aggregating multiple print jobs, comprising: (A) storing a first print job group of one or more print jobs in memory, the one or more print jobs of the first print job group complying with a first set of print job aggregation criteria; (B) storing a second print job group of one or more print jobs in memory, the one or more print jobs of the second print job group complying with a second set of print job aggregation criteria; (C) receiving a print job; (D) aggregating at least a part of the received print job with the first print job group to form a first aggregated print job set if (1) the received print job complies with the first set of print job aggregation criteria and (2) one of a set of release criteria is met; (E) aggregating at least a part of the received print job with the second print job group to form a second aggregated print job set if (1) the received print job complies with the second set of print job aggregation criteria and (2) one of a set of release criteria is met; (F) transmitting one or both of the first aggregated print job set and the second aggregated print job set to one or more document processing resources for processing; and (G) apprising a network client, with a system manager, of when one of the first, second and third print jobs has been processed with the one or more document processing resources.
In accordance with a second aspect of the disclosed embodiments there is disclosed a computer implemented method of automatically aggregating multiple print jobs, comprising: (A) storing a first print job group in a first memory section, the first print job group including a first set of print jobs with each one of the first set of print jobs complying with a first print job aggregation criteria; (B) storing a second print job group in a second memory section, the second print job group including a second set of print jobs with each one of the second set of print jobs complying with a second print job aggregation criteria; (C) over a time interval, receiving a plurality of print jobs with each one of the plurality of print jobs complying with either the first print job aggregation criteria or the second print job aggregation criteria; (D) sorting the plurality of print jobs, over the time interval, so that each print job complying with the first print job aggregation criteria is stored in association with the first print job group, and each print job complying with the second print job aggregation criteria is stored in association with the second print job group; (E) if a first selected condition occurs, (1) aggregating the first set of print jobs to form a first aggregated print job set, (2) providing a first job ticket, including a set of processing related instructions for each print job in the first aggregated print job set, and (3) producing print output with the first aggregated print job set and the first job ticket; and (F) if a second selected condition occurs, (1) aggregating the second set of print jobs to form a second aggregated print job set, (2) providing a second job ticket, including a set of processing related instructions for each print job in the second aggregated print job set, and (3) producing print output with the second aggregated print job set and the second job ticket.
In accordance with a third aspect of the disclosed embodiments there is disclosed system for automatically aggregating multiple print jobs, comprising: a first print job group of one or more print jobs, the one or more print jobs of the first print job group complying with a first set of print job aggregation criteria; a second print job group of one or more print jobs, the one or more print jobs of the second print job group complying with a second set of print job aggregation criteria; a system manager for coordinating the flow of print jobs to one or more document processing resources; and a computer-readable storage medium comprising one or more programming instructions that, when executed, instruct the system manager to: receive a print job, aggregate at least a part of the received print job with the first print job group to form a first aggregated print job set if the received print job complies with the first set of print job aggregation criteria and one of a set of release criteria is met, aggregate at least a part of the received print job with the second print job group to form a second aggregated print job set if the received print job complies with the second set of print job aggregation criteria and one of a set of release criteria is met, transmit one of the first aggregated print job set and the second aggregated print job set to one or more of the document processing resources, apprise a network client, with a system manager, of when one of the first, second and third print jobs has been processed with the one or more document processing resources.